By Daniel Lindvall. At the time of writing [20 August 2015] the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism has just published what is described as ‘the most comprehensive analysis of diversity in recent popular films ever conducted’, focusing on ‘data assessing gender, race/ethnicity and LGBT status in movies’ (Public Affairs Staff […]

By Wheeler Winston Dixon. I’m very pleased to announce that after the preservation of Jim Krell’s originals by Anthology Film Archives about a year ago, Anthology has been kind enough to arrange for a screening of some of Krell’s key works on April 17, 2015. Krell’s films are such utterly original works that the chance […]

By James Knight. It’s been thirty-two years since Wim Wenders shot Room 666 in a hotel room at the 1982 Cannes Film Festival. What concerned Wenders at the time was the future state of cinema, and primarily, cinema’s relationship with television. The film featured several well-known directors alone in a hotel room speaking directly to […]

By Rajko Radovic. If you have a message, send it by Western Union! That was the legendary answer Hollywood bigwigs would fire at those among suspiciously mortal critics, usually foreign or pinko, who were wondering whether or not the pictures they were making had anything to say. On a certain level the dismissive retort affirmed […]

By Wheeler Winston Dixon. One of the most original and iconoclastic personalities of the New American Cinema, Jim Krell created work that is simultaneously so important, and yet so unknown, that the news that his complete works are now being archived by Anthology Film Archives constitutes a major event, closing a significant gap in experimental […]

By Mats Carlsson. Like all great documentaries, The Act of Killing demands another way of looking at reality. It starts as a dreamscape, an attempt to allow the perpetrators to reenact what they did, and then something truly amazing happens. The dream dissolves into nightmare and then into bitter reality. An amazing and impressive film. […]

By Daniel Lindvall. Recently four Swedish cinemas, all run by Folkets Hus och Parker (‘The People’s Houses and Parks’, an organization with roots in the labour movement), decided to start rating the gender balance of their films according to the so-called Bechdel test. The test, named after the American cartoonist Alison Bechdel and introduced via […]

By Wheeler Winston Dixon. Does anyone remember The Thalia, located at 95th and Broadway, one of Manhattan’s greatest revival houses? I pretty much grew up there. It opened in 1931, and closed in the mid 1980s. The still above is from Woody Allen’s Annie Hall (1977); I’d use another still if it were available, but […]

From the 3rd to the 9th of March 2014 the Bristol Radical Film Festival returns with another packed programme of overtly political documentary and fiction film from around the world. From historical classics to contemporary video-activism, short films and feature productions, we show the films that the multiplexes won’t, in the time-honoured tradition of using […]

By Michael T. Toole. Richard C. Sarafian, the versatile Armenian-American director/actor whose most celebrated film, the exhilaratingly existential chase drama, Vanishing Point, is still one of the most actively discussed road films today, died on September 18, 2013 of pneumonia in Los Angeles. He was 83. Richard Caspar Sarafian was born on April 28, 1930, […]